Stop me if this sounds familiar: you need a few extra batteries, and know they're in a drawer somewhere, but you can't remember where? If your drawers are a bit too cluttered and unorganized, reader Owlmonkey has a great solution: just organize them alphabeticaly.

Drawers clutter easily, and when you have so many items inside each one they becomes a challenge to …
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I have a set of drawers for random things that I organize by alpha. Any items that I would name starting with A, B, or C go into that drawer. So I would find adapters there, batteries of all kinds, etc. Then there are drawers for D, E, F etc. Sometimes it takes a couple guesses for how I would name something but usually I find it on the first try.

Organizing by alpha is easier for me to remember than having a taxonomy of drawers by category, because I can't usually remember the categories I once used or how things would be sorted. Alpha is clean, and I usually only have to look in one or two places to find it.

Tape? No problem, all of that is filed in the T drawer. Scissors? Felt? Velcro? I know where all of my misc items are. It's been really confidence building to have a place for everything and a sense that I can always find it.

I don't know if I'd necessarily use this for my workspace—after all, quick access to the most important items is the best way to keep your workspace productive—but for the drawers where you're just storing miscellaneous "stuff," this seems like a quick way to make sure you find everything when you need it.

Drawers clutter easily, and when you have so many items inside each one they becomes a challenge to …
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